AND HERE WE are yet again: another season run-in has been proofed against Liverpool’s awesome desire.
Jurgen Klopp ended a 30-year wait for the Premier League title but Covid and an empty Anfield made the glory a little unsatisfactory, and so there was still some longing; a sense of an itch not fully scratched. Wrapping Klopp’s farewell in confetti therefore became the perfect possible ending, and once again, Liverpool have found their ending would have been too perfect.
This shocking home defeat to Crystal Palace means that it won’t happen, and the reason for it is is dowdily conventional. This team is not yet ready to win the league.
Deep down, Liverpool fans may be shocked today but they won’t be surprised. Atalanta deserved their thumping win on Thursday and Liverpool’s league form has been wobbling for weeks, so perhaps today is a reversion to the mean.
Nobody expected Liverpool to be in a title race at the start of the season, and Champions League football plus a domestic cup win is the kind of haul only the blindly optimistic wouldn’t have deemed acceptable at the season’s start.
But still, what a bizarre and spectacular way to revert to the mean. Liverpool’s defence has been leaky for a long time – they haven’t kept an Anfield clean sheet in the Premier League since the goalless draw at home to Manchester United in December – but their season has fallen apart this week because their attack has ceased to function.
One Liverpool fan account tallied the ugly numbers: over the last three games, Liverpool have two goals from 68 shots and a cumulative xG value of 9.1. Those goals were both at Old Trafford: one was from a set piece and the second from a penalty.
All of Wataru Endo, Darwin Nunez, Diogo Jota, Luis Diaz, Mo Salah and Curtis Jones missed sitters today, and this has been the story of their ruinous week.
We know why Darwin Nunez missed his chance – it’s because he has the composure of a Jack Russell within earshot of a fireworks display – but the mystery is how his flightiness has spread and contaminated his more cold-blooded teammates. The sheer number of glaring misses defy neat explanation, but everyone currently looks inhibited by anxiety, and it’s difficult to peel that away from the fact that Jurgen Klopp is leaving at the end of the season.
For weeks after Klopp’s announcement, their sense of momentum was irresistible: destiny is only a tangible thing when everyone believes it’s happening. That Liverpool kept pace with City and Arsenal with an inferior team that was then depleted by major injuries was an incredible achievement, but something seems to have profoundly broken in the FA Cup collapse at Old Trafford.
That seems to have been the moment Liverpool clipped a hurdle and stumbled; the point at which the comedown started and Liverpool rubbed their eyes, clicked their dry throats and realised the road ahead remained forbiddingly long.
Liverpool haven’t been able to regain their pace since, and hence the anxiety in their finishing: they are snatching at chances and losing their coolness in front of goal because they feel another chance won’t come. Every shot and every chance is currently freighted with too much significance: there is no such thing as next season for Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool. Score now or score never; win now or win never.
This is how talk of a Last Dance and a glorious farewell for the manager replaces momentum with a millstone.
Liverpool have ridden these heady, emotional waves before, and so they know the crash can be horrific and usually featuring Crystal Palace. But this game felt less like that infamous 3-3 than it did the 2-0 defeat to Chelsea immediately prior in 2013/14, as Liverpool squirmed desperately for a goal that just would not come. (We would even be talking about another slip by a Liverpool captain had it not been for Andy Robertson’s goal-line clearance.)
But there are technical issues too. They also cannot fall back and rely on their own processes as Klopp’s first great team could do. This Liverpool attack is more individual and improvisational. The problem with a missed chance in this team is that nobody can say for sure how, where and if the next chance will fall. Manchester City and Arsenal can be dreary to watch but they do not suffer from these problems.
Klopp’s first great team ended with the 2022 Champions League final, after which the victorious Carlo Ancelotti said Liverpool’s systemised attack was predictable. They over-corrected in signing Darwin Nunez to replace Sadio Mane. Darwin is unpredictable to the opposition but also, sadly, to his own team-mates. Nobody can trust where he will run and what he will do. And even if he makes the right decision on both of those fronts, the chances are he will be offside.
Given everything is malfunctioning, it is no longer wildly risky to leave your defence three-on-three with Liverpool’s attack. Palace and Atalanta have both gambled on these improved odds and made a killing. Both pressed Liverpool high and man-to-man, and gambled that they wouldn’t be picked off if their press was bypassed. Liverpool have also shown they struggle to play through when pressed with such intensity. Endo in particular has become a complete liability in possession. There is a reason he was their Plan C in defensive midfield.
And to compound it all, Liverpool’s attack has a physicality problem too, as Mo Salah has returned from the most significant muscle injury of his Liverpool career moving like Tiger Woods has moved around Augusta this week.
This is all to say that this Liverpool are a team in transition whose entire perspective of time and trajectory was thrown askew by Jurgen Klopp’s decision to leave at the end of the season: the team will be better tomorrow but Klopp’s incipient exit means everyone has lost interest in tomorrow.
Klopp’s sheer capacity for heartbreak and disappointment is an integral part to his success: Liverpool have been at their best under him when they risk losing to attack with all they have. This team just ultimately hasn’t had the quality to execute at the rarified level at which they are operating.
It’s difficult to see Manchester City letting the league slip from here, and even if they do, Liverpool do not look capable of capitalising by winning all of their remaining six games.
As Klopp said after losing the title in 2022, “if you want to win big, you have to accept you can lose big too.”
And although Liverpool may have lost again, everyone one of their supporters will agree that Klopp’s creed is one worth living by.
